On 24th August, hundreds of thousands of UK teenagers are finding out their GCSE results. For those who achieved their desired grades, congratulations! However, not everyone will have achieved the results they were hoping for.

For parents of teens with disappointing grades, it’s important to help your teen stay calm and keep everything in perspective – no matter your child’s grades, there are lots of options available. Stephen Moore, Director of Justin Craig Education, recommends:

Discussion with teachers on results day

Regarding performance on different assessments, proximity to grade boundaries and whether it’s worth getting assessments remarked. For Maths and English, resitting is compulsory for students failing to achieve a pass (grade 4) if they are under 18 and/or studying full time. In other circumstances e.g. apprenticeships, it may be possible not to resit some GCSEs, but to take a functional skills qualification instead of the GCSE. For other subjects, resits are not compulsory but low grades may affect decisions about A Level choices – again, teachers can provide invaluable support here.

Speak to the Sixth form or College

If your child has narrowly missed the required entry grades, its worth speaking to their preferred sixth form college as they may still offer your teen a place, particularly if extenuating factors could have affected their performance. If that’s not possible, they might allow your child to transfer to a different course or subject, or recommend other colleges and sixth forms which might suit

Providing support and encouragement

To help research and evaluate all the various different options. For example, if your child doesn’t want to resit their GCSEs, then it’s time to make a plan that takes their grades into account. If however, they have a specific career in mind, then now is the time to research all the possible ways it can be achieved! Whilst retakes may be required, there will be other routes, for example, apprenticeships, professional courses, access courses, entry-level roles, work experience, volunteering.

For students considering GCSE retakes, the key to retake success is to learn from the experience and then to create a new study programme. For example, this might entail requesting papers back from the exam board to identify where marks were lost, discussing their approach to revision with teachers or getting specialist support from private tutors or revision course providers.

For more advice from Justin Craig on how to achieve exam success, call the team on 01727  744340.